


Terrible Burglars, Broken Coffee Tables, and Maybe-Stalkers, by Stephanie Brown

by aohatsu



Category: Batgirl (Comics)
Genre: AU, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-21
Updated: 2012-12-21
Packaged: 2017-11-21 20:24:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,093
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/601716
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aohatsu/pseuds/aohatsu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“You’re not seriously stalking me, are you?” she asks. “Because I’ve taken karate since I was eight, and I will totally kick your ass.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Terrible Burglars, Broken Coffee Tables, and Maybe-Stalkers, by Stephanie Brown

**Author's Note:**

  * For [VerboseWordsmith](https://archiveofourown.org/users/VerboseWordsmith/gifts).



> Hi! :) 
> 
> I’m pretty sure the fandom we actually had in common was Young Avengers, but I recently got really into Young Justice, and so I was interested in your first prompt, with Batgirl, and decided to read up on it. Wikipedia basically made me fall in love with Steph after five seconds, oh my God. 
> 
> That’s how I ended up writing fic about Steph, even though I’ve never actually read a Batgirl comic. Hell, I’ve never read a Batman comic! I’m sorry if I get things wrong because of that, and if you want me to re-write you something else, like Young Avengers, I can totally do that for you. I had fun with this though, and I’m happy I gave it a shot. Uh, totally claiming creative license and—you said you like aus, right?
> 
> \-- ;3

“ _Batman 4, now available on Playstation 3 and X-Box!_ ” is what it says, for maybe the third time that morning alone. Steph chews on her lip, staring at the small television on the corner counter in the kitchen, balancing precariously on the stool, watching the hi-definition images of the new video game flash across her screen.

It looks amazing.  
  
“Steph, the chair has four legs. Use them,” he mom says, walking past her to reach into the refrigerator and find the orange juice. Steph lets the stool drop back to the floor with a double-thud, and hops up.  
  
“Hey Mom, I know what you can get me for Christmas this year,” she tries, just as her instant waffles pop out of the toaster. She grabs them by the edges and drops them on a paper plate, waving her fingers after because they were still pretty hot.  
  
“We’ll see,” her mom says, not even looking at the commercial as she picks up the remote and mutes the television. “Don’t you have to get to school soon?” It’s actually a good point; Steph is still in her pajamas, the long polka-dot ones, with the batman logo on the front of her chest.  
  
“Yeah,” Steph says, before shoving one of the waffles in her mouth. “I’ll talk to you later,” she adds, but from the way her mom rolls her eyes and waves her off, she probably can’t understand through the waffle. Steph shrugs and moves down the hallway to dig around her room for a shirt and pair of jeans that’ve been washed more recently than, uh, any of her... other clothes.  
  
She finds a shirt with the Flash logo, admittedly not her favorite, but it’ll work in a pinch. She grabs another waffle and ties her hair up in a frizzy ponytail, and then grabs her bag and kicks on her sneakers, waving to her mom before running down the apartment door steps.  
  
She jumps over a dog doing its business on the grassy part of the sidewalk, and almost doesn’t even fumble the landing, as she runs down the street to catch the city bus. She started community college last month; is taking basic English and remedial math, all she can really afford for the moment. She missed a lot of school last year, because of this thing with her dad, and, well, the whole pregnancy thing. It still hurts a little bit to think about either of them.  
  
She and her mom will go to the cemetery every once in a while, if they ever feel like they need closure, but there’s nothing she can do when she lies awake at night and wonders if her baby is crying, if he’s laughing, if he misses her as much as she misses him. Which is crazy, she’s only nineteen, she wasn’t ready to be a _mom_ , and that’s why she gave him up, but she still misses him. Giving him away to a good family was supposed to make everything easier, but it hasn’t, not really.

Then again, she doesn’t have to wake up at three in the morning to breastfeed or something, so that’s good.

She just wishes she could have, like, status updates, or something, you know? Pictures or 70-character sentences on twitter, anything, but her mom had convinced her to make it a closed adoption. Give the kid its best shot, and all that. And Steph gets that, but it’s not like she can stop thinking about it.  
  
She sighs, and climbs onto the bus when it pulls to a stop in front of her, along with the other two kids standing at the stop with her. “Hey Nell,” she says, swinging into the third chair from the front, next to the dark-skinned ten-year-old with her pink game boy going full speed.  
  
“Hi Steph!” Nell yells, but doesn’t look up until her character reaches a save point maybe two minutes later.  
  
“Did you see the new Batman game is out already? I can’t wait for Christmas, I hope my mom buys it for me,” Nell says, wistfully stuffing her game boy in the front pocket of her backpack.  
  
“Yeah,” Steph whines, “you and me both. Why do they have to make them so expensive?”  
  
“Because we’ll buy them anyway,” Nell nods, and Steph laughs because it’s true. She has so many DC comics and video games stuffed under her bed, it’s crazy.  
  
“Have fun at school, kid,” Steph says, poking Nell in the stomach because she’s ticklish as she gets up to get off at the elementary school stop.  
  
Next stop: Basic English and remedial math. Yay.

 

 

 

“Excuse me?”  
  
“Hold on,” Steph yells, and then presses her thumb down hard on the up-arrow, making her Batgirl character jump into the air and just barely avoid the laughing bomb the Joker just threw at her. “Come on, come on,” she says, practically vibrating. She’s on the fifteenth level, she just has to finish this boss, please, please—

“Hey!”  
  
Her character gets caught in the Joker’s blast zone, and she curses and then spins around, narrowing her eyes and saying, “You just made me lose! Do you know how long I’ve been trying to get past level fifteen? An hour and forty-five minutes! Basically my entire shift!”

She’s wearing her green apron, but she doesn’t really have to. Nobody ever really comes into the coffee shop on Saturdays, because the college campus next door is empty. College kids, their espresso addictions are the main point of income for Steph’s paycheck every two weeks. Which is a good thing, actually, since her mom’s nurse’s wage isn’t all that much, and the money her dad had brought in wasn’t coming in anymore. Not that it had been that steady when it was, being all illegal and shit, but now it’s just her and her mom trying to keep the rent and PUD paid, plus she has her own tuition to worry about.

The guy who’d interrupted her is wearing a red sweatshirt with the iconic ‘R’ that stands for Robin on his chest, so he should understand Steph’s point about the fifteenth level, but he just looks at her with this ridiculously annoyed, serious face. Huh, he looks kind of familiar, but she doesn’t remember ever meeting him before.  
  
“You’re playing a gameboy while you’re at work? Can’t you get fired for that?” he asks, crossing his arms.

Steph crosses hers too, and nods to the empty coffee shop. “I don’t see any customers.”  
  
He lifts his hand. “Me, I am a customer.”  
  
“You barely came in two seconds ago,” Steph protests. “Jesus, what do you want anyway?”  
  
“I came in like ten minutes ago! You weren’t paying attention!”  
  
“Game! Did you not see the game? You’re wearing a Robin sweatshirt, you should understand the significance of Joker bombs.”  
  
“It’s not—this is Dick’s stupid sweatshirt, not mine.”  
  
“Dick,” Steph says, deadpan.  
  
“He’s my brother. I want the turkey sandwich in the window and a Peppermint Mocha.”

Steph says, “Ha! I meant you.”  
  
He burrows his eyebrows as she grabs his stupid sandwich and throws it at him. He catches it, and then says, “You’re kind of rude.”

“You made me lose _the fifteenth level_.”

 

 

 

She falls down on the couch in her living room when she gets home, covering her eyes with her arm. “I’m so tired,” she moans, and grabs for the pillow that fell on the floor just a second ago. She covers her face with it and groans. She hates stupid, annoying customers who bug the crap out of her.

“Mom!” she calls out, but nobody answers, and she belatedly recalls that her mother is picking up an extra shift tonight. It’s as good a time as any to check her room.

She slowly pulls herself up and walks down the hall, pushing her mom’s door open and flipping the switch to turn on the light. Steph does this once or twice a week, has since she was fourteen and her mom had that relapse and stole a bottle of pills from the hospital. She’s been better since then, but neither of them takes chances with it.

She’s in the second drawer down when she hears the noise: a loud crash, like something breaking in the kitchen. It takes her two seconds to dash into her room on the opposite side of the hall and grab her aluminum baseball bat from her closet, where it’s been since her last little league game.

Just as she takes a cautious step into the hallway, her bat poised for a homerun, she hears another noise, and this one is discernibly a man’s voice, yelling, and followed by another crash. Steph runs out this time, because somebody is in her house, breaking all of her and her moms stuff, but comes to a halt when she sees the end table completely smashed on the floor, and a guy clutching his stomach where he’s rolling in the wreckage, groaning in pain.

The bat slips a little as she says, “Wow, you’re the worst burglar ever.”

 

 

 

On Monday, after her mom has yelled at the insurance company for four hours because the burglar managed to break their coffee table, a lamp, and the front lock, not to mention he could have hurt Steph if she hadn’t had a bat, and he hadn’t been really stupid, Steph tells Nell all about it on the bus. Nell listens with big eyes, and says, “That’s weird. He beat himself up?”

“I know.”  
  
“Maybe it was Batman. You know, he could have seen the break in, busted in and beat him up, and then left before you even made it to the living room!” Nell exclaims, climbing onto her knees on the seat.  
  
“If it was Batman,” Steph says, grinning, “he should have stuck around to let me have an autograph.”  
  
“I don’t know,” Nell says, “he’s pretty secretive.”  
  
“How would you know?” Steph asks, poking Nell until she sits down again. It’s safer that way.  
  
Nell leans in conspiratorially, and whispers, “Do you see that boy? In the back, with the stupid hat?”  
  
Steph tries to discreetly turn around, stretching, and sees the kid she’s talking about. He looks really bored. “Yeah?”  
  
“I think he’s Robin.”  
  
Steph can’t help it; she starts to laugh. “No way!”  
  
“Yeah! His name is Damien, and he’s totally weird. He’s like, the best in P.E., and math, but he doesn’t talk, like, ever.”  
  
“Maybe,” Steph says, grinning, “you should sit next to him at lunch. Maybe he just doesn’t know how to start talking. You’re good at it though!”  
  
Nell rolls her eyes. “I’ve tried, he just glares at me. I’ll try again though. And ask him if he’s Robin.”  
  
Steph cackles as Nell gets off the bus, Damien walking slowly behind her with a wary expression on his face because Nell is already looking at him with a big smile on hers, but he gets off too. Steph stands up straight when she notices someone else boarding the bus though, because he’s got the same stupid red sweatshirt on as he did on Saturday. He glances at her too, even though he has his nose stuck in a book.  
  
“Hey, Dick!” Steph waves, and then grins more when the guy almost trips over nothing.  
  
He turns around. “It’s Tim,” he says loudly, and Steph nods agreeably.  
  
“Right,” she says, and waits for him to sit down before she stands up and jumps the aisle, sitting next to him. He gives her an unimpressed look, but she doesn’t really care. “I think you’re bad luck,” she tells him. “Right after I saw you and lost my game, a guy broke into my apartment.”

Tim doesn’t react.  
  
“Hey!” Steph says, and waggles her fingers in front of his face.

Tim looks at her, and then says, “What do you want me to say? Sorry? I’m sorry a guy broke into your apartment, it happens. Just buy a new coffee table.”  
  
Steph pauses, and then narrows her eyes, turning slightly and crossing her arms. “How’d you know he broke my coffee table?”  
  
Tim shuts his book and heaves a big a sigh, giving her a long look, like she’s tormenting him or something. Clearly, it’s the other way around, and he’s being all creepy and suspicious too. She’s never seen him before, she thinks—why is he suddenly on her bus route?  
  
“You’re not seriously stalking me, are you?” she asks. “Because I’ve taken karate since I was eight, and I will totally kick your ass.”  
  
Tim snorts out a laugh, and Steph is taken aback by how nice it sounds, actually. It’s weird because the guy is a jerk and shouldn’t be laughing at all. It doesn’t mesh with his personality.  
  
“I wouldn’t waste my time stalking you,” Tim says.  
  
“Excuse me? Are you trying to insult me?”  
  
“I’m stating my opinion,” he says, and Steph just glares at him until the background flashing through the bus’ window changes, and she blinks, refocusing.  
  
“Shit, shit, shit!” she yells, jumping up. “You made me miss my stop!”  
  
“What—“ Tim starts, jerking around, and then he jumps up too and says, “This was not my fault!”  
  
The bus pulls to a stop much to the amusement of the bus driver, and Steph jumps off of it, running back in the direction of the stop that she missed. Tim is right behind her though, and she yells, “You’re really helping my stalking theory here!”  
  
“Get out of the way and it won’t be an issue anymore,” he says, and bumps past her as he speeds up. Screw that, she thinks, and races him until they nearly collide with the community college’s brick gate, five seconds before class starts. He doesn’t follow her to math, thankfully, but she still gives him a weird look when he goes in the classroom opposite of hers.  
  
She can see him through the classrooms’ open doors the whole time.  
  
She’s scribbling little pictures of expressive waffles, with little hands and legs, on the edges of her notebook when it occurs to her that he never did answer how he knew the burglar had broken her coffee table.

 

 

 

“Okay,” she says, slamming her hands on the table Tim’s just sunk down at in her coffee shop, because this is getting creepy, “what the hell is going on, and why are you following me? Actually, just please tell me you didn’t break into my apartment.”

Tim visibly hesitates before he says, “Whatever, I’m not following you, and I did not break into your apartment.”

“Then who did?” Steph throws back, not willing to be pushed off this so easily. The guy clearly has issues.

“How am I supposed to know?” Tim yells, frustrated, and drops his book on—what sort of language is that? It’s all weird symbols. There’s a picture peeking out though, like he’s using it as a bookmark, and that would be unremarkable, normally, except—

“Is that Cass?” Steph grabs for the picture, holding it up before Tim can keep it away from her.

“Do you have to grab all my stuff?” Tim asks, sounding a bit defeated. Score one point for Stephanie Brown.

“Is this Damien?” The little boy Nell was talking about earlier is in the photo too, scowling next to Tim and Cass, both serious-faced. There’s four others too, all guys, and everybody’s well-dressed like it’s some kind of Christmas card family photo.

“How do you know Cass and Damien?” Tim asks, looking up at her finally.

She opens her mouth, “How do _you_?”

Tim doesn’t answer, just glares, so Steph shrugs and drops the photo back to Tim’s table. “Cass is in my basic English class, I think she’s auditing it, but we work together sometimes, and Damien is this weird kid on the bus that my friend Nell has a huge crush on. She thinks he’s Robin.”

Tim chokes on nothing, it’s pretty amusing actually. “At least I wasn’t the only one to slip up,” Tim mutters, after a second, and finally says, “So, uh, they’re my sister and brother. Cassandra and Damien, I mean.”

Steph stares at him, and cocks her head to the right after a second. Someone bumps into her from behind, and she’s all set to ignore it—it can get crowded in here on weekdays, but she’s on break right now and she doesn’t care, except that whoever it was doesn’t just keep moving. Instead, he grabs her around her neck and pulls her back with him, choking her in the meantime.

She struggles and yells, and they knock a chair to the ground. Somebody screams and there’s the sound of a gunshot, but she can’t yell because someone’s thumb is pressing hard into her throat, and she can’t _breathe._

_"Get the hell off her!"_

Tim jumps up, and Steph sees his legs literally flip up in the air, the only thing holding his weight is one hand pressed flat on the table top, and his boot lands smack into the guy’s back, or it must, because Steph can't see it, but he lets go of her with an, "Argh!"

She falls forward just in time to miss a fist flying at Tim's face. _What the hell is happening?_ She gasps back air into her lungs and looks at Tim and the guy struggle until Tim beats him down. People are ducking under tables and  hiding, but she still doesn't quite understand what's happening until Tim yells, "Steph, get down!" like her life depends on it. Except, she thinks, Tim is holding this guy down with his knee on the square of his back, so he can’t really move, let alone get down or duck or—and the other the guy, the one with the gun, he's nor pointing it at _her_.

She took those damn karate lessons for a reason, she thinks, and before she can  think better of it, she climbs to her feet and leaps forward, knocking her entire body into the gunman's, knocking him to the ground. The gun fires but the bullet misses and the gun goes flying across the floor. She reaches her arm back and slams her first down against the man's face, and grimaces when she hears the crack and the howl that accompanies the broken nose.

He bucks her off of him and she falls off, backpedaling until her back hits the bottom of the service counter. She shakes off the wash of fear though, and instead changes direction and jumps up to block the guy’s path when he looks like he's about to go for grabbing one of the kids under the table I'm the corner as leverage now that his gun isn't a factor.

"Don't even think about it, Buddy," she says, and adjusts her stance to the basic position that means business.

 

 

 

She thinks she should get a raise, and she thinks Tim needs to explain what the hell that was, because she knows he knows. Unfortunately, the cops insist on statements, and the customers who'd hidden are calling her and Tim heroes, and so there's a reporter, and Tim fucking _disappears_.

She's going to murder him.

They offer her a ride home in a cop car, but given her father's past proclivities towards criminalism, she laughs nervously and shakes her head, saying no thank you. It takes maybe five minutes walking along the sidewalk—lit by the night lanterns because it's already almost eleven, that took _forever_ , seriously—for Tim to show off how creepy he really is by popping out of the shadows.

"Hey," he says, making her jump three feet in the air and move to smack him in his stupid face. He catches her hand, and says, "Jesus, be careful."

"Oh my God," Steph says, crying out, "what is wrong with you? What was that? Where did you go? I'm going to kill you and bury the body where nobody will ever find it!"

He smirks. "You could try." But then he shakes his head and gets that serious face again. "Look, I'm sorry this has been so weird. You're right; we've been keeping an eye on you. I really didn't break into your apartment though, that burglar was just stupid. Who just breaks a lock? And you’d just gone in, he wasn’t watching or anything." He looks genuinely disappointed in the thief’s lack of skills.

"So, you didn't break in,” Stephanie lays out, “but you did follow the guy who did break in, in."

“Ah!” she yells a second later as realization dawns. "You broke my coffee table!"

"No, the burglar broke your coffee table," Tim denies.

" _After you threw him on it!_ " Steph yells.

He even looks guilty. Steph stomps her foot angrily. "And why the hell have you been following me around! And who is 'we'? Tim!"

"I'm not actually supposed to tell you," Tim says, "but you're not going to let this go, are you?"

He looks tired. Steph scoffs. "No."

Tim stuffs his hands into his pockets, and takes a deep breath. "Your dad... was mixed up with some pretty dangerous guys before he died, Stephanie."

Steph's shoulders slump. She'd thought that might be it, but the flood of disappointment washes over her anyway. _Dad_ , she thinks. _Of course it was Dad._

"Steph," she says, after a minute. "You saved my life; you can at least call me the right name. It's Steph."

"Okay," he says, rubbing the back of his head. "Steph, yeah. You saved me in there too though. That was... that was really cool."

Suddenly embarrassed, Steph just nods.

"Anyway, there are just these guys, like the two in the coffeeshop; they think you know something about this big last break-in your dad was helping to plan before he died."

"Why would I know?"

Tim looks at her apologetically. "Your dad told them you did, when—well, you know when."

She sighs, and sits down on the curb.  "Dad, you suck," she mutters, and feels Tim drop down next to her, his shoulder bumping against hers.

"That's why we've been watching you," he says, "my brothers and me, and Cass. It’s sort of what we do."

Steph states at him. "Oh my God," she says, "Nell was right, Damien is actually Robin."

Tim chokes on his laughter, until Steph hits him on the back. "He'd kill you if you called him that. It's not like we go around in Batman costumes. But, uh, we are the inspiration for the game."

"Seriously?" she asks.

"Yeah, Bruce came up with the concept, and then Wayne Enterprises developed it. It got blown way out of proportion though." He almost looks smug, Steph thinks, and rolls her eyes at him.

"So, which one are you then? Nightwing?"

"I don't know if I should tell you," he says, wary.

"Oh come on, you broke my coffee table!"

"Fine! Jesus, I'm Red Robin."

Steph laughs manically once it sinks in, grabbing a fistful of fabric of his stupid Red Robin sweatshirt. He says, "Yeah, yeah, well, you shouldn't be playing video games at work!"

"You're hilarious," she says.

"Let's just hope I can protect you as well as I can make you laugh."

"You don't have to follow me around. That's kind of creepy, you know? We could just hang out like normal people,” she suggests, kind of nervous despite herself. This is the most unconventional way to make friends ever, she thinks, but... “Besides, I’m pretty sure I can take care of myself.”  
  
Tim grins. “Yeah, you did a pretty kick-ass job back there.”  
  
Steph grins smugly, “Yeah, I did.”

When Steph was little, her favorite color had been purple. She’d liked it so much that her mom had dyed her waffles purple and put purple sprinkles on top of them for her birthday, and her dad had bought her this stupid purple tutu and a matching cape, and they’d pretended to fight crime together. It was one of her best childhood memories, because it was the only real time she could remember where she really thought... maybe she did love her dad, maybe he was a good dad, maybe.

She eventually gets kidnapped by the some guy named the Penguin, and Bruce Wayne himself saves her, go figure, but she learns, right before that, that her dad had been telling the truth. They said he’d had a change of heart, and switched the password right before they’d shot him, to a seven-letter code nobody could figure out.

It was spoiler.


End file.
